The single bell of the tiny, domed Russian Orthodox cathedral a couple of hundred yards beyond The Gabba's boundary tolled mournfully an hour before the start of play on the fourth day, as though inviting witnesses to the last rites for England's hopes of retaining the Ashes. In fact it was calling the headscarved babushkas of south Brisbane to Mass, although by the end of the day it was tempting to think that it had been sounding a sombre warning to Ricky Ponting.

For 2½ days Australia's captain had commanded the stage. The headlines acclaiming his knock of 196, the centrepiece of his side's gargantuan first-innings total, rang with superlatives and explicitly drew comparisons with the nonpareil Bradman. Even more impressive, however, was the way Ponting had organised a perfect exposition of the art of Test cricket.

As his team gradually wrecked England's morale, it was like watching a bullfight in which everything goes according to plan. First the men with capes get the beast to run off its initial energy. Then the picadors and the banderilleros do their work, gradually dismantling the animal's defences. Finally the matador arrives, in his suit of lights, to deliver the coup de grâce. The bull never has a chance.

So on the first day we had attacking batsmanship that evoked the arts of Trumper, Bradman, Harvey, Walters and Hookes. On the second day the innings was carefully consolidated, leading to a declaration that left time for Glenn McGrath and Stuart Clark to go about the scientific destruction of England's batting. The inexorability of the whole thing drew such admiration for the Australians' talent, their enthusiasm and their ruthlessness - for the sheer eagerness of the way they went about the task of exacting revenge for the defeat of 2005 - that it left almost no time to mourn the fate of their hapless victims.

But then, for reasons which will continue to be debated long after the series is decided, Ponting refused to order the final blow. With Australia's lead at 445, or more than twice England's first-innings score, he declined to invite them to follow on and instead sent out his own batsmen.

At first it seemed like a breathtakingly vicious attempt to deepen England's humiliation by showing that the cracks opening up on the playing surface held no fears for truly competent batsmen. Then, of course, he would unleash his own bowlers to show how those same cracks should be exploited. Left to survive 5½ sessions with a target of 647 to mock their efforts, England could only be playing to salvage their pride.

Thanks to Ponting's extraordinary decision, however, that was exactly what they did. Even taking into account the culpable rashness that cost the wickets of Andrew Flintoff and Andrew Strauss - the captain and vice-captain, for heaven's sake - England's other batsmen enabled the team to hold up their heads in public once again, itself a remarkable feat given the plight in which they had landed themselves and the scorn that had been ladled upon them for their manifest shortcomings.

Ponting, having scored 60 not out in Australia's second innings, did not reappear as his players took the field. Instead Adam Gilchrist led out the team and continued to supervise them for the remainder of the day. The captain, it transpired, was suffering from back spasms provoked while he was batting, something that might have been avoided had England been made to follow on.

And then, after bowling three overs at England's openers, McGrath left the field. The chief destroyer of the first innings was having a problem with a bruise on his left heel - the landing foot for a right-armer. So now it became possible to speculate that this problem had originated earlier in the match, and that Ponting had chosen to bat again in order to give his chief strike bowler time to recover.

So at last things were looking up for England. Ponting was injured, and Gilchrist was not showing anything like the same command of the team's resources in the field. McGrath, too, was crocked; he returned to bowl another nine overs, but took no wicket and was twice smashed to the long-off boundary by Kevin Pietersen from consecutive balls.

And even if England were still heading for defeat, they would have the memory of assertive innings by Pietersen, Alastair Cook and Paul Collingwood to take into the next match. On the bowling side, too, Ponting's decision to bat again had enabled Englishmen lacking match practice to put in some overs, none to more useful effect than Steve Harmison, who sent down a dozen overs in the Australian second innings and, although he failed to take a wicket, at least began to look like a reasonable facsimile of himself.

So Ponting, who by lunchtime on Saturday seemed to bestride the world game, suddenly looks a little less omnipotent. It may be that the subsequent decision to bat again was taken not out of a desire to intensify the scourging of the opposition but to camouflage a weakness or two on his own side.

By that time Australia were so far ahead in the match, both statistically and psychologically, that almost nothing he could have done would have imperilled their chances of leaving Brisbane with the lead in the series.

He made the sentimental decision to let Justin Langer get the century that had eluded the opener in the first innings, he took the chance that his bowlers could complete the job in a shorter time, albeit with a bigger cushion of runs, and he accepted the risk - a small one, but none the less real - that the weather might play a part on the final day.

But by choosing to postpone the inevitable, by delaying the final thrust of the sword, he provided his intended victims with a glimpse of redemption which he may yet come to regret.